Electrodeionization (EDI) technology utilizes loose ion exchange resins used for water purification. In these commercially available systems, water is fed through an EDI stack, and dilute charged particles are removed. Because the resin is loosely held in the stack, sealing is difficult and leakage can be a problem. Previous technology developed at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) uses an ion exchange resin EDI system to remove charged impurities (e.g., salts) from commercially valuable products, whereby leakage becomes a significant concern, see U.S. Pat. No. 6,495,014, the entire disclosure of which is herein incorporated by reference. The wafer used in the ANL bioreactor was also developed at ANL and is disclosed in application Ser. No. 10/213,721 filed Aug. 6, 2002, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,797,140 B2 entire disclosure of which is incorporated by reference. Thus, a new resin EDI system was designed to prevent leakage. The resins are packed tightly together in a “resin wafer” used to contain and separate charged molecules in EDI.
Chemical reactors utilize chemical reactions and catalysts to convert starting material to commercially valuable products, where separations technologies are required for the downstream capture of the chemical product, to separate-out the product from by-products and starting material. Bioreactors utilize biological components to convert starting material to commercially valuable products and also require downstream separations to purify product from starting material. Conventionally, the production and the separation occur in separate process components. Previous ANL technology has combined these two process components, the EDI separation with the biological production to create the “Separative Bioreactor”.